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Arnoldi

Wright,

        There was alot of confusion about arnoldi/filamentosum throughout the 
30's until the 60's. There is a good chance that the true arnoldi was not 
even in Europe until Hannerz brought them back in the late 50's. I am not 
sure of this, as the man they were named after, J.P. Arnoldi (the "Innes" of 
the German aquarium hobby) lived into the early 50's and he has articles on 
them in the 1940's. He was involved in their description as he was for most 
killies in the early part of the century, so he should certainly have known 
what they looked like. 
      The confusion was compounded as Meinken described filamentosum in the 
mid-30's but if you look in Innes' Exotic Aquarium Fishes (and in other old 
German references) you will see a filamentosum listed as gardneri. At that 
time, gardneri  was a type of filamentosum and their pre-WWII filamentosum 
was a lovely strain with very long tail extensions, unlike any I have seen in 
thirty-five years of killie keeping. Roloff photographed the strain in the 
30's and did a big article on it in an old JAKA, mid-70's. So, before WWII, 
there were two filamentosum strains going around, with one labeled gardneri 
and maybe a strain of arnoldi, we don't know.
      Aquarium Hamburg then added to the confusion as they sold a 
filamentosum as arnoldi in the 1950's. This became our old (1950's on) 
filamentosum strain. 
        So one cannot be sure of the breeding accounts that do exist on 
arnoldi. They might all be dealing with filamentosum.
    The Hannerz/Scheel strain is the only strain that was ever established in 
the hobby after WWII and only for a while. Only LaCorte was able to raise a 
number of them.
    There is a picture for arnoldi in Hans Frey's Dictionary of Tropical Fish 
and another one in Sterba's FWFOTW and both could go either way -- 
filamentosum or arnoldi, it's a hard call.  I think Sterba's pic is a 
filamentosum and Frey's might be a population of arnoldi but I doubt it. 
Arnoldi looks too much like thierryi to really confuse it with filamentosum.
    The walkeri confusion was with thierryi and not arnoldi at all. The first 
commercial importation of walkeri in 1952 or 53 was misidentified as 
"gardneri," which is why you see those weird looking gardneri pics in old 
Axelrod books of the 60's. The first two commercial importations of thierryi, 
one to the USA and one to Europe, were misidentified as walkeri. Foersch did 
a great article on walkeri for DATZ that Killie Notes (before it was JAKA and 
KN) translated in the early 70's.
     Arnoldi is definately a valid species and obviously one of the most 
difficult and unexplored species we know. Its weird, it comes from a common 
killie area and yet it has rarely been seen in nearly a 100 years. The 
mystery surrounding this fish has always fascinated me as it is the last one 
of the early legendary species of killies to remain virtually unknown in 
captivity. There have been a few collections brought back to Europe as 
Seegars has rather new photos in his Aqualog book and there was the Canadian 
importation. But arnoldi is the forgotten species of killie husbandary.

Robert E.
     
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